Tuesday, October 29, 2019

REPLY to: Keeping the Disciplic Succession Alive (Hemasarira das)

Comment from Hemasarira das.

Prabhupada mentions "40 years of fighting" within the Gaudiya-matha camp where practically the GM crashed into a meaningless village organization. Same today, forty years of inner conflicts and splits turned ISKCON in the West into a meaningless cult no intelligent Westerner can take seriously. 

"Christianity won". 

[PADA: Yes, well since we have people like Kamra devi telling the newcomers that they cannot worship a guru like Srila Prabhupada, because that would be like marrying the dead corpse of Amelia Earhart, the ISKCON devotees are chasing people away in droves. Who wants to participate in a religion that worships the equal of the dead corpse of Emilia Earhart? And worse, Kamra says the acharya is a dead / Emilia Earhart corpse program / is how she will "keep the succession alive." 

Do people actually read what they write before they print it?

And that's why so many devotees like: GBC folks / Gaudiya Matha folks / Rocana / Kailash / Hanuman Croatia et al. tell us that our idea is the worship of the post samadhi, posthumous, post mortem dead party, aka the acharya of ISKCON Srila Prabhupada.  

OK so we Prabhupadanugas are promoting worshiping the dead, which is like marrying the dead corpse Emilia Earhart according to folks like Kamra devi. Then people tell me the ISKCON temples are like an empty morgue. Well no kidding, you guys made it an empty morgue by declaring the guru is dead and gone, and the acharya is equal to the dead corpse of Emilia Earhart.

Thanks to God that I grew up as a Christian! 

And thus I know that the theme "Jesus is a alive" is what keeps them going for 2,000 years. No Christian ever says Jesus is another dead corpse like Amelia Earhart. They know they have an eternal connection to their guru which has went on for 2,000 years because they understand the principle that the acharya is eternal.  

So ISKCON has splintered in so many ways, but most of the splintered camps are seeking "the living person" and so they have run off to Sridhara Maharaja, Narayan Maharaja, and GBC gurus like Radhanath and so on. Very few people agreed with us that Srila Prabhupada is not the same as the dead corpse of Amelia Earhart -- and so they unitedly joined the dead guru sampradaya of Kamra and etc. 

All glories to -- the dead corpse of Amelia Earhart, and then they wonder why their religion is empty? And you are right, they cannot attract people with discrimination because worshiping the living deviants process in not attractive.

Yes the Christian's won. Their police force, courts, media and FBI had to save me from the GBC's molester guru process. And almost cent percent of the "original devotees" also had to jettison ISKCON and go back to living in their "mundane society" of the Christians. That is because ISKCON has become nearly uninhabitable for most folks, whereas the Christian society is at least a whole lot more sane, safe and habitable -- and no small amount of more pious evidently. 

And that is also why the ISKCON leaders are now desperate for support after losing most of the Westerners, trying to work out a deal with all sorts of Hindu congregation members and making Hindu types the legal registered temple authorities and so on, to keep their properties going. That is because the Westerners have largely abandoned their ship. One guru even said "we do not want to make Western devotees, its too much trouble." He just wants to pad his wallet with money from the Hindus. 

In any case, the people who worship a bona fide acharya like Jesus will always be superior to the people who worship false gurus, at least that is the lesson many of us took from all this. Thus the Christian's police had to raid the GBC guru's criminal temples, and the Christian's court had to take down the GBC's child molesting process and so on. So, a blind uncle is better than none.

Even now sometime regular "karmi" people write me and they simply are appalled at the GBC idea that we need to worship deviants as some sort of gurus and messiahs. That is because they understand the first principle of spiritual life, we have to have a bona fide acharya as the foundation, whether it is Jesus or another pure devotee, or else nothing else will stand on a false foundation of worship of a conditioned soul as the guru. In the Vedas this is called "acharya upasanam," first, you need to take shelter of the acharya.]   

Of course in India, any hodge-podge is accepted so long there is material opulence. Poor Indians throng to the ISKCON temples to improve their material condition. 

[PADA: Correct. Some Hindus see opulent Western guys riding around in big cars, carrying around expensive Apple laptops, and they think, if we hitch ourselves to this wagon we might get some mundane benefits, salary, post and so on. And many have. At the same time, some of them are sincere and they get on board only to get disillusioned later, like some of the ex-GBC people who write me from India. Not everyone simply wants to hook up with a materially opulent program to get some sort of mundane benefit in the name of religion, but many will, because in India there are a lot of materially desperate people.] 

Why the Russians take ISKCON seriously might be a kind of temporary excitement. Already there are devotees getting doubts about the management. There are of course — started by Prabhupada — quite some temple buildings in the West that attract visitors. Some are even mentioned in tourist brochures. So people go there to relax, "there is some good energy there". But Prabhupada's system of temple life is practically dead. So actually Prabhupada did not approve these year-long fights.

[PADA: Yes, a number of Russian devotees have been writing to PADA and they are totally losing faith in the GBC's guru process. Dhaneshvara das is also in Russia preaching about the "Divine and Demoniac" leaders of ISKCON, and that the GBC's core cadre poisoned Prabhupada, so they have defectors even from within their own camp over there.]

Prabhupada: But at the present moment, we'll go on talking for years together, and nobody is defeated; nobody is going to be disciple. Then what is the use of talking like that? So this kind of things will not do. We have to follow the Vedic principle that either remain without guru... And if you want to make a guru, first of all, be convinced that "He is fit to become my guru." (Honolulu, May 22, 1976)

In other words, if one party is unable to defeat the other party then Prabhupada says: If he is unable to defeat the opposing party, then the next step is that he should not just stand there meekly, but should give up his life. The third process is followed if he is unable to execute the above-mentioned two processes, and this is that one must leave the place and go away. If a devotee does not follow any of the above-mentioned three processes, he falls down from his position of devotion. 


[PADA: Yes, shastra says if we cannot defeat the other party with superior arguments, we are advised to give up our life. I don't think Srila Prabhupada and Krishna want us to do that factually. However, that is happening anyway, in a sort of slow motion back door process -- in any case. 

Many devotees are giving up their bodies prematurely, and we think it is connected to their depression over the dismantling of ISKCON. More than a few people told me they have "lost their will to live." For example, one woman told me that in 1986, she has lost her will to live. And 12 months later I was at her bedside as she was dying of terminal cancer. And she was unconscious for quite a while but as I left, I put my hand on her forehead. And she opened her eyes and said "Haribol Puranjan." She sort of let me know, she was checking out of here, and she did. 


My friend's wife is a nurse of 20 years and she thinks the ISKCON "premature deaths" process is very much like the problem she has with some of her patients. These patients "lose their will to thrive." In other words, they no longer want to continue keeping their soul in this particular body, they have essentially given up hope. They would rather leave than stay. 


And she says, the other nurses talk about the problem in the back room, "Patient X has no will to thrive, we cannot cure this patient." And so they sort of sit back and try to keep the patient as comfortable as possible, and almost all the time their predictions comes true, these patients pass away, nothing can be done to save them. So a lot of devotees have died from terminal illness, and some from drug and / or alcohol overdose and so forth, a lack of will to thrive.   


I am not sure what the actual problem is here as far as standing up to the evil doers with good arguments? Anyone who says acharyas are not having illicit sex with men, women and children immediately has the superior argument. It seems to me a lot of people just do not want to apply the superior argument "to keep friends" with various ISKCON people. Sentimentalism. 


However, Arjuna was told by Krishna that yes, you can go sit under a tree and avoid the battle, but the battle will consume your existence in other ways. And that has happened to so many uncountable folks who tried to avoid confronting the evil doers, but they got sucked into the battle or results of the battle anyway -- exactly as the Bhagavad Gita describes will likely happen.

Of course when people say that their idea of keeping the parampara alive is to compare the parampara to marrying a dead woman like Emilia Earhart, that is pretty depressing itself. Sheesh!

Even Madhu Pandit is now rejected by many ritviks, what is the point here?

PADA: Yes, we get complaints about the Bangalore program on a regular basis from various people. First of all, why are so many people even discussing Bangalore? Its because these folks have made at least some sort of project with at least some degree of success. Otherwise, if Bangalore was not making any large scale temples and akshaya patra and other programs, no one would have even notice they existed.

So that is really the first problem, most -- if not all -- of the critics of Bangalore cannot do something for preaching on a large scale themselves. Worse, most of these critics cannot even make a small scale -- anything of substance program -- such as a teeny little home sized preaching program themselves. Or its very rare.


And most of these critics have not made much progress since 1997 when Bangalore first broke off and started their process going. Ok they are probably not going to do much in this lifetime if they cannot get themselves into gear since 1997. Some of these critics have been going along since 1997, and what have they got to show as their alternate "better program" since then?

Let's ask for example, why aren't hardly any of them making a teeny little home preaching program, gathering of a small handful of people, making their house or apartment into a small temple? And did we forget to mention that the now very large Bangalore temple process itself started from a small rented property and it grew from there. The critics are barely not even starting the seedling process for the most part? 

So Bangalore needs to "work with the other ritvik programs," which are far and few between self evidently, or don't even seem to exist practically on another level. And a lot of the ritviks are fighting like cats and dogs among themselves, why would someone with a successful program why to get entangled in all that?

Where are these alleged alternate programs? 

Locally, Bangalore folks have made a nice temple here and they also made another one in New Jersey. There are nice kirtans, bhajans, preaching from Prabhupada's books and they even made a cow gaushalla here. So they may have their defects, but they also have their plus side as well. But having little or no program at all is another defect, it was the same defect as the "asara" (useless) 1936 Gaudiya Matha. 

My main point is, when are "the other ritviks" going to make a few substantial programs and temples, which are full of thousands of people on festival days -- with Prabhupada being the worshiped guru for their program? And since the critics have complained about Bangalore since 1997, when are they finally going to get their act together and do something themselves after all this time?

And then, after they do that -- with something to show for their preaching -- we might then discuss joining those programs with the Bangalore process, but we do not see their alternate programs happening hardly at all. In fact a number of so-called ritviks still attend GBC temples. Or worse, some so-called ritviks think we need to listen to GBC defenders like Bhakta das. 

And way back in 1997 we had all sorts of problem with "other ritviks" such as Krishna Kanta who made a big complaint about us on his web site. And then the Sanat / Mukunda / Prahlad / Bhakta Peter / Janardan / Dayalu Nitai's HKC Jaipur people have been totally infuriated as soon as they found out that PADA was helping liberate hundreds of children from their favorite anal reconstructive surgery guru parampara, which beats children with bamboo rods that makes them black and blue and even breaks their bones. They love to see others suffering, especially children, and they are calling themselves worshipers of God? And then some of them write PADA, why aren't you working with us? 

We cannot liberate children from that odious process -- without infuriating the defenders of that process like HKC Jaipur ilk. So they are defenders of a program Sulochan calls "putting children into a wood chipper." Who wants to "work with" these type of child abuse lovers and defenders?  

And some other "ritviks" told me about how devotees cannot take donations from Monsanto folks, Microsoft folks, or Bill Clinton folks et al., but Srila Prabhupada had a policy that we could and did take donations from anyone, and he never excluded any donator that we know of. So they want the ritviks to agree with Srila Prabhupada's envious God brothers -- that ISKCON is bogus for taking money from sinful people. And thus Srila Prabhupada is bogus. Why are they siding with the people who despise Srila Prabhupada, and giving their exact arguments? 

Of course some of these people said my taxi driving was bogus, "for moving meat groceries." Except Srila Prabhupada approves of Jayananda driving a taxi. They are always attacking the things Srila Prabhupada approved of. How can we "work with" the people who keep insisting that Srila Prabhupada is bogus, and his best disciples like Jayananda are bogus?

To sum then, many of these people have no interest in cooperating with anyone, whether PADA or others, never mind cooperating with one another to make a substantial preaching program. They are essentially a tempest in a tea cup. At the same time, various people from the Bangalore program cite PADA links in their preaching, and some of their members write us nice questions about the history of the GBC. 

And meanwhile we get a lot of insults and harassing from many others claiming to be ritviks. So if people want to "defeat Bangalore" or "defeat PADA" that is fine, do something better and lets see how that works out. Its amazing that some suggest I should "work with" the people who wanted to see the child beater's process continue? In any case, Bangalore folks have done what should be done by others -- in that -- they made an independent program that worships Srila Prabhupada as the guru. 

We think that is a good example of the principle, never mind it has flaws, its more than most others have done or ever will do. A blind uncle is better than none. That does not mean I am fully supporting anyone, in fact I did not "fully support" ANY of the leaders even when Srila Prabhupada was here. I worked with them to accomplish other things, but that does not mean I had fully surrendered to them, or fully agreed with them, or thought they were my factual authorities etc. 

I am saying that we should all do what Bangalore is doing, make an independent program. And if they are the main example of doing that, it does not necessarily mean they are either good or bad, it means others cannot do better.  Anyway, here below is a photo of an example of what they are doing. Do better, and we will advertise that. 

And Bangalore has put the ritvik documents into the Supreme Court of India. That is one of the most important things that needed to be done, and no one else has done that. We need a legal paper trail of what the orders of the acharya were supposed to be, for historical and legal reference. And no one else ever will do that evidently. So if you want to defeat others, do better, and if you do better we will then advertise that for you. Keeping anything alive requires living people doing living things, and I am sorry that I have to point out the obvious.

ys pd 







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